Posts by djl team

Johan qualifies as a Divemaster

By djl team, 11 December, 2009, No Comment

I work as a magician. I love my job and I have no plans on working as a divemaster as a profession. So why did I take the certification then? Well, first of all it gave me so much more experience as a diver. I left Davy Jones Locker with over 100 dives but thats not all. Being able to assist on different PADI courses was like taking them again. Practise makes perfect. I also got the opportunity to assist in showing the students how to perform the skills required to be a diver. To do that you really have to know the skills better, so I learned as they learned. It was also a great opportunity for me to practise my english as that’s not my native language. Coming to thailand from europe I’ve heard a lot of stories about unserious diving companies on Koh Tao. DJL is nothing like that. All instructors are very professional with safety as their first priority and they really care for you to learn. The rest of the staff is so friendly and helpful all the time. It really is like a big family, not like other big unpersonal dive companies I’ve been diving with before. Besides all of that – If you want to party it seams like there’s always something going on. I would just love to get back in the water with DJL again.
Thank you all so much.
Cheers
Johan

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My Boat Handling Course, by Luke White

By djl team, 11 December, 2009, No Comment

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After working as a PADI Dive Master and Instructor for two years at Davy Jones Locker I’ve experienced many amazing trips on our high speed RHIB, from diving with the many bull sharks at Chumphon Pinnacle to searching the Gulf of Thailand for sunken shipwrecks. But I always wanted the chance to get behind the wheel, so when the opportunity came up for me to do the BSAC Boat Handling course, I jumped at the chance.
The course started out with an afternoon of theory, learning how to find my way around the boat, basic boat handling and some safety and rescue work. Then the fun part arrived.
Getting behind the wheel for the first time was a little bit scary but my instructors, Les and Tim made me feel really comfortable and with all their experience gave me the confidence to drive the RHIB for the first time. We started with some high speed turns and then moved on to more technical low speed maneuvers. It was a perfect day in the Tao for boat driving, the sea was as flat as a pond with no wind. As we progressed throughout the course I became more confident and learned about chartwork and position fixing using Seacharts and GPS. I got to put everything I learned into practice when my instructor Tim told me he had some GPS marks for some possible ship wrecks in the area. So, using my training we located the marks on a map and planned our day at sea. Sadly, nothing came of the GPS marks but Tim and his technical diving student, Jeremy did a dive to 50metres on a wreck called the Torpedo so the day was not wasted, I learned how to pick up marks using GPS and I logged valuable hours driving the RHIB.
The day came and it was time to take my driving test, I was nervous and admittedly I didn’t drive my best, but I was glad to hear from Les and Tim that I had passed. Now I’m looking forward to more shark dives and wreck expeditions and after gaining more experience driving the RHIB I aim to go on to become a BSAC Boat Handling Instructor at DJL Diving. It’s a great addition to any CV and will help to get a job in the dive industry, especially Australia. So, many thanks Tim and Les for the great course and if anyone wants to do something more than diving then I strongly recommend the BSAC Boat Handling course which is an Internationally recognized license, so you can drive anywhere in the world.

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Yet another crazy snorkel test at Davy Jones’ Locker!

By djl team, 11 December, 2009, No Comment

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To celebrate the completion of Ollie and Johnny’s Dive Master training, X-Factor came to Koh Tao, Sairee Beach. The contestants were ‘Tinkerbel’ (Johnny) and ‘Ollie the Spaniard’ (Ollie). They were each asked to ‘dress up’ for the occasion which they somehow mistook for wear a dress…yeah right guys!

The contest began with a duet and our lovely ‘ladies’ performed a version of ‘Year 3000’ by Busted which had the audience wincing to the beat. This was followed by a classic solo and dance performance from the Spaniard crooning ‘Don’t cha’ by the Pussy Cat Dolls. Ollie’s performance was not bad but not quite good enough to knockout Johnny’s alternative rendition of Five’s ‘Everybody Get Up’! The X-Factor panel of judges consisted of our very own Simon Cowell (Neil, DJL DM), Lou (Alex, DJL mentor & Instructor) and Madonna (Rachel one of our own former DMTs). Neil was so disappointed with all the performances he had to leave the building! Either way we thought they were both stars and give them our very special thanks and congratulations on completing their Dive Master course. They both worked really hard over the past 3-6 months are going to be great dive masters and will be missed by us all here.

Back at DJL Diving…we say ‘bring on the next snorkel test’!

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Building a brighter future

By djl team, 1 December, 2009, No Comment

As part of DJL’s continued commitment to eco diving, I was one of a large number of volunteers to help in Koh Tao’s latest project, ‘Buoyancy World’. This project has seen a number of Koh Tao’s dive schools unite for one purpose, to help preserve paradise.

Buoyancy World is a new artificial dive site that has been designed to take the strain off of some of the most commonly dived dive sites on the island. The new site will contain a large number of man made structures, including a giant lizard, a concrete butterfly and a bamboo forest. In addition to the weird and wonderful structures that will make the new site so interesting, a number of fixed objects will also be added, with the aim of these assisting in the teaching of buoyancy control.

However, before the structures for the new site can be deployed they must first be built. The building phase of the project has been going on over the last few days, and today saw several of the larger structures nearly reach completion thanks to the hard work of all the volunteers.

The volunteers were divided into small teams, each responsible for different aspects of the building project. These roles included welding, steel cutting, rendering, meshing and my personal job of the day, smashing coconuts into tiny pieces to use as stuffing for the structures.

As the day went on, and the blisters came, a real sense of camaraderie was built up between all of the volunteers. I felt privileged to work on a project with a group of people so passionate about preserving the underwater world of our beautiful island. I have no doubt that the new dive site will be absolutely amazing. I look forward to seeing how it develops over the coming months and can’t wait to see which aquatic life will end up calling it home.
James, Instructor at DJL

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Sink, Search… Salvage!

By djl team, 17 November, 2009, No Comment

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I led a team of technical divers from Davy Jones’ Locker to dive a shipwreck 54 nautical miles north east of Koh Tao called the Pangan. We chartered a boat from another dive centre, which was a converted fishing vessel and decided to tow the DJL rib to use as a safety boat.

Travelling out over night we arrived on the mark, dropped a lazy shot and ran some 56 meter profiles on the ship. After completing a successful days diving we began our journey back, the north east trade winds were evident and we had one metre swells coming across the starboard bow. After relaxing on the top deck for three hours the ship stopped dead in the water and the captain appeared a little flustered. He started pointing to the engine room so I went to investigate only to find the room full of water. At this point we got all our bilges together in an effort to pump the water out. The water level was still rising. One of the bilges was an independent engine; this started to flutter then conked out after trying to restart the Honda engine for several minutes.

I made the decision to abandon ship as the water was coming in too quickly then pulled the rib along side and starter to get her ready. I shouted to Gary to strip the twin sets, regs and wings and grab the extra gas we had taken along for our compressor. With the help of the team we tied the compressor and the twin sets down to the chartered boat. The captain dropped the anchor in an effort to stop the windward drift. I finally took the bags, the 4 tech divers and the thai crew away on the DJL rib. As the fishing boat left the surface we took one last look as she took her last breath, screaming with air intake. The GPS showed us to be 28 nautical miles from Koh Tao with an overloaded rib that was taking on water half an hour before sunset; we were not having a good day! We were unable to contact anyone on our VHF. After 2 hours of bailing water we crept into Hin Wong Bay, secured the rib and headed for the bar!

With a compressor and 5 twin sets on the sunken vessel I started thinking about salvaging it. We had a mark for the ship but they rarely sink in a straight line so we had to pick a good weather window as I expected the search to take some time. After 3 weeks we got our break and with a team of eight (four bottom and four support divers) we set off, this time using our big boat and rib. Again travelling overnight to the mark, we arrived on station at 06:00 and started to search using the rib. After around 20 minutes I picked up a return and after running over the anomaly a few times found that it was a bigger return than the expected target. This was around 70 meters long with a 5-metre beam rising from the bottom. As this wasn’t our target I continued to sweep, searching with the trusty trade winds. Four hours passed and I decided to return to the first finding. I dropped a shot on the mark and our first team entered the water for a look. An hour later they surfaced and reported a large sand mound with holes dropping through 3-4 metres, indicating an old sub bottom shipwreck. Excited by our find we continued to search for the compressor and after another 4 hours we located her just less than 1 nautical mile away from our original mark.

We got straight to work and I descended the shot line carrying another line to secure the compressor. This would allow us to relocate the compressor if the lift failed. I tied the shot to the bow and noticed a large hole, evidence of a collision. Luckily she was sitting upright so I quickly located the compressor at 62m and secured the second line. As I returned to the shot I came across the twin sets, cutting the rope that was tying them down we lifted them across the bottom of the shot. Whilst tying them off I clipped a bag on the line and started my ascent. After running the decompression I got onto the boat and briefed the team on the upcoming lift and carried out a dry run. We prepared the bags and lines on the boat then Gary entered the water. After 10 minutes the bags were on the surface. We lifted the compressor onto the boat, followed by the twin sets. The team then completed a second dive to free up the shot and on the way recovering the boats compass to return to the ships owner.

By Tim Lawrence, Davy Jones’ Locker

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